The Stasis of Judgment

I'm thinking of a line in the movie Magnolia.

TJ Mackey (Tom Cruise) is sitting in an interview with a reporter who has just lambasted him with the truth of his past. She has exposed him as a fraud and a liar, and as she systematically goes through her evidence, he becomes increasingly and more ominously still, staring fixedly at the reporter, drilling through her body with the sheer force of malice in his eyes.

Finally, she stops: "Mr. Mackey -- what are you doing?"

He responds, teeth clenched, eyes unblinking: "I'm quietly judging you."

This line, and its delivery, has sent a chill through me every time I've watched Magnolia (let's just say that I have watched it many times).

It is so utterly pointed, so completely malevolent in its tone, and so . . . . true, that I have wondered whether it is the "realness"of the words, the universality of the sentiment, the authenticity of the performance, or some unknown alchemy that brings it to such effect.

I'm beginning to discover that, in my experience, fear or avoidance of confrontation usually serves a great welcome mat to judgment. I've observed this in others and in myself.

If I don't ever confront whatever it is that's bothering me, I can just sit and quietly judge you, without any inconvenient experiences interrupting the little internal hell I'm creating -- experiences like, say -- compassion -- seeing you as simply another vulnerable human being --or, god forbid, taking a look at myself.

These are some of my thoughts about Judgment: Hardly a low-maintenance guest. Requires tenacity and feeding -- maybe even conscientious nursing -- to help it take, and retain, a truly solid form. Needs a specific kind of isolation and enclosure to thrive and continue. Any actual confrontation with the object of its focus is threatening, because that is likely to introduce factors, concepts, and realities that challenge its validity.

I believe that Judgment requires isolation to live. I believe that Judgment is static and de-evolutionary.

Until today, I hadn't really made this connection between conflict-avoidance and judgment. The more I look at it, however, the more I think there's something to it. TJ Mackey sits there, contained, motionless, hoarding his internal reality, and as a result, is capable of quietly judging.

I realize that one of the things that has really bugged me about some of the clearly conflict-avoidant people I have experienced is that I always have had a sense that, under the surface, there is a big cauldron of judgment just waiting to boil over. And I've experienced that boil-over with some of the "nice", "calm", "loving" conflict-avoiders I've known. When they blow, they blow big, and all that contained judgment comes spilling out. Not a pretty sight.

I admit -- conflict is often uncomfortable for me -- no doubt about that. But personally, I'd rather break the boil than suffer the infection -- because I do believe that Judgment is infectious, noxious, and, as counter-intuitive as this may seem, given the adjectives I've just used -- subtle.

I know many people who would say that they are not judgmental.

To them I say "Ha!" -- and again I say "Ha!"

I think I have met, maybe, one person in my entire life that didn't entertain judgment -- and I can't even name that one person right now, which may blow that whole theory -- no, wait -- I can name one -- Ruthie -- a retarded teenager that I worked with during High School -- I think she was actually free of judgment. I think that she did really just flow along with life, experiencing without judging.

I think that some of the people, including myself, who have claimed that they are not judgmental are simply not judgmental about the things that people in our culture are traditionally judgmental about.

For example, I spent a good deal of time recently with a young man who was on his spiritual path, seeking a life of enlightenment and upliftment. He seemed to me, at first, to be amazingly easy-going -- able to simply accept with equanimity a lot of things that others would see as dire inconveniences, willing to interact with a great variety of people in their various aspects without become "fluttered" by them, foregoing the usual aspects of prosperity and possession that others around him placed such high value on.

As time went on, though, I began to sense that there were judgments within this young man. His favorite comic seemed to be Bill Hicks, who regularly judged what was going on around him, often very harshly (I'll give Bill his due, however, and say that he seemed aware of this and poked fun at his own judgmentalness as ruthlessly as he poked at other things).

I now believe that my young friend did have judgments -- about those who did not choose the path that he had chosen, about those who put value on possessions or stability created through structure, about those who did not choose to be inclusive in the way that he was inclusive. I also believe that he thought that, if he were living a "perfect" spiritual life, that conflict would never arise, that in some way, he seemed to hold conflict as antithetical to enlightenment, which would indicate to me a judgment about conflict.

I rarely heard this young man speak these judgments, but they seemed to leak out occasionally, in little comments that he would make, or looks that he would give. Subtle. And present.

I sensed in him the next level of judgment -- that of judging one's own judgments. I think he knew internally that these judgments didn't really fit with his overall philosophy. Yet, my perception is that, in his silent suppression of these judgments, I don't believe that he mastered them, and in fact, I believe that he may have fostered them. Which ties in for me with my idea that judgment requires isolation to thrive.

And all of that, for me, is laced and interwoven with judgments of my own. Some of it, I believe, is true perception -- simple noticing of what I experienced with him. Some of it, though, is certainly judgment in me.

This is the question I am asking myself: "How do I live in a state that reduces judgment to the greatest extent, or, even better, eliminate it within myself altogether?"

There are some things that I know -- they are evident in everything I've observed and experienced -- for example -- adhering to the Golden Rule (and other aspects of basic Cosmic Law) results in a more expansive experience of life for me. This is not a judgment. It is, for me, a knowing -- directly experienced, easily observed.

When I can look at what someone else is doing and simply say: "Well, they have the right to choose that, but I don't think it will work, based in my experience," (Knowing) I have a completely different internal experience as compared to when I say "That's wrong." (Judging)

I notice that, for me, Judgment wants and requires proof, and evidence, and supporting facts. I notice that my Knowing doesn't need these props.

So, how to dissolve Judgment? Air it out. Take that nasty old guest out to the lawn, hang it on the line for all to see, and let it flap in the wind until it disappears.

I have found that harboring my Judgments in secret feeds them, and that bringing them forth exposes them to the cleansing sunshine of new information and self-examination.

I want to remember this -- avoiding a conflict is probably feeding that nasty house-guest. Closing the windows and blinds probably grants it the perfect medium in which to grow.

I think that I believed, at one point in my life, that judgment would protect me -- save me -- let me know what I thought.

I remember an evening when I was watching Sixty Minutes, and there was a story on about a young woman who had brutally murdered her grandmother. I heard myself think: "Wow. She should definitely be executed," and then watched as chaos ensued in my head.

I had been a staunch opponent of the death penalty since I was very young-- it just seemed intuitive and "right" that killing someone was not an answer to them killing someone else. I realized that my stance on the death penalty had, up till then, really been a judgment -- not a considered thought.

I then found that I had to take a look at where I had obtained that idea, and why I was challenging it now. Interestingly, I realized that society (generally) would think me non-judgmental for holding that position, and that I had "judged" those who held the position that I had just clearly espoused in my own head -- "She should be killed for this."

So, was my stance really a knowing and considered opinion, or just an anti-judgment (which is, to me, the same as a judgment)?

I do know this -- I can't end something by practicing it. I can't hope to end judgment and exclusion by being judgmental and exclusive. This is a knowing. As an old acquaintance used to say: "That doesn't go there".

I'm thinking that the power of this line: "I'm quietly judging you," rests in that word "quietly".

I think that judgment, in its most virulent form, is silent.

Once you start airing it out, it quickly becomes the ridiculous, flapping, dingy sheet that it always was -- one-dimensional, hopelessly square, and suitable only for covering something up.